Mercedes López Romero, Ciudadanos deputy in the Andalusian Parliament, advises not to look at the eclipse even with protective glasses, and if they are children, even less so. Romero suffers from 90% blindness due to having stared at the sun during an eclipse when she was only 8 years old, without using any type of protection.
Read more Guide on what to do, and what not to do, to enjoy the eclipse in Barcelona
“I am afraid to see people going to watch the eclipse with children and everything; they are not aware of the danger it poses; I am afraid to see how people plan to take advantage of this holiday, getting on the road and everything to watch the eclipse,” said Mercedes López, 45 years old and a physiotherapist by profession.
When she turned 18, she joined ONCE, where she studied Physiotherapy, after giving up on Medicine and Nursing studies that she would have liked to pursue as first and second options due to her blindness, and after being told at 17 that she would not be able to obtain a driver’s license.
Mercedes caused the injuries as a child by playing “who could hold out the longest” staring at the sun
She did not immediately notice the sunburn injuries and, according to what she told EFE, it was at school at age 14 when she began to not distinguish some numbers on the blackboard, so she went to the ophthalmologist for the first time, who immediately identified the burns and asked if she had been looking up continuously.
Indeed, that was the case when she was eight years old and, accompanied by other children in the playground of her school in the town of Dalías (Almería), where they gathered to play in the afternoons, they hid to be able to look at the sun during an eclipse without the adults, who did so at a certain distance and with protective measures, noticing their mischief.
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“We started saying who could hold out the longest,” and she was the one who did it, accompanied by other children, including her sister two years younger, who did not hold the gaze as long and escaped the injuries.
The loss of vision was progressive from her youth and is still worsening, so she also suffers from light hypersensitivity: “Cloudy days are deadly for me, and very sunny ones too; and I lose vision over the years.” She can watch television and the mobile phone screen without any glare or contrast and without removing the sunglasses she wears almost constantly, even indoors.
“I see as if there were always a lot of fog, and I no longer distinguish colors and constantly confuse them,” she added, recalling that her injuries cannot be operated on because they affect the nerve tissue, right in the macula. Mercedes has very fond memories of the years she dedicated to politics because, she said, “I was able to defend everything I believed in; that is why those were very happy times.”
She was referring to her time at the Directorate General for Disability, because to manage support for the disabled she has assured that “empathy is required, but a lived empathy, knowing what they feel every day when they go out on the street and feel violated.”
